


Did You Get the Message Yet?

by LayALioness



Series: I Hope This Song Will Guide You Home [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Cats, Friends to Lovers, like a lot of cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy sighs. There’s another tattoo around her bicep—a crown made of laurels, it looks like. She’s exactly his type, which just seems deeply unfair. Octavia’s going to be gloating for weeks. Months, maybe. An indefinite period of time, depending on how long Clarke decides to keep her apartment, and God, he really hopes she keeps her apartment.</p><p>A moves-in-next-door fic feat. Goth Clarke and Old Cat Lady Bellamy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Did You Get the Message Yet?

**Author's Note:**

> For Liz/bronteangel, who sent me One More Lie by Aranda, I'm pretty sure in some attempt to get me to write something serious and angsty. I wrote this, instead.
> 
> Also I realize most rent controlled apartments would not allow 11 cats but we're just going to pretend the owner is a huge cat person, ok? Or just deeply indifferent.

Bellamy didn’t mean to become an old cat lady, but here he is at twenty-six, with an ancient apartment, eleven cats, and a strict eight o’clock bedtime.

He’s lived in the apartment for a while now, partly because of the rent control and nice neighborhood, but mostly because it was a fancy hotel in the early 1900s, and his kitchen has a dumbwaiter he uses as a mini wine cellar.

He’s also sort of into wine, completely by accident. It’s recent, but he’s already spent inadvisable amounts of money on vineyard trips and old bottles, so it’s kind of a problem. He firmly blames Octavia, for bringing him as her plus-one to a wedding at Sonoma County, which is basically just a less pretentious version of Napa Valley. Bellamy spent most of the week-long trip smelling everything before he drank it, and reading a lot of brochures on the history of different wines.

“Only you could take the fun out of getting drunk, by telling me how old the drink is,” Octavia had grumbled.

The cats were an accident too, though that’s less to do with Octavia, and everything to do with Miller. Back when he and Monty were still in the _we like each other but we can’t actually_ say _we like each other_ stage, Monty was fostering animals for the local shelter. Monty, unfortunately, has a cat allergy that’s rather hard to ignore. He’s still pretty upset about it, but now drowns his sorrows in rabbits and Jack Russell Terriers.

Miller has no such allergy, but he does have an inability to say no to Monty, which is why Bellamy came home from work one day to find their apartment playing home to five furry strangers.

Eventually, Miller moved in with Monty, which was to be expected. But he also left the cats, and when the shelter finally called about them _five months later_ , Bellamy wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

Octavia says it’s because he has abandonment issues, but Octavia _always_ says it’s abandonment issues. She’s somehow majoring in psychology, and he deeply pities all her future clients.

So, Miller—and sort of Monty, to be honest—are to blame for the first five cats, but Bellamy doesn’t actually have a defense for the rest of them. They’re all different, and they’re all sort of assholes—but _all_ cats are assholes, so he can’t really blame them—and he loves them all the same.

And the eight o’clock curfew isn’t really his fault, either; he has to be up by four in the morning, since the archives building opens at five, which doesn’t really make sense, since _no one_ is even there until ten or eleven, but. He doesn’t function well on anything less than eight hours of sleep, so he’s only being practical.

It’s because of this that he’s even in bed right now, at nine-thirty at night, with a pillow over his head. Someone just moved into the apartment next door, which used to be occupied by a sweet elderly lady that always gave him coupons for Friskies, even though he never even knew her name. He’s hoping she just moved into assisted living, and didn’t die or anything.

The apartment’s been vacant for a while, nearly three months, and he was getting pretty used to the quiet. Then he saw the u-haul parked out front, and the door beside his was propped open with boxes of books and some sort of computer equipment, so he’d figured someone had moved in finally, but he’d also forgotten what living next to someone his age actually meant.

Mainly, it seems, it means a lot of very loud, angry music. Bellamy isn’t sure what his new neighbor looks like, exactly, but he’s willing to bet they’re a college-aged kid with an x-box account and some questionable facial piercings.

He’s also very aware that nine-thirty isn’t exactly late by other people’s standards, and so he probably shouldn’t go marching over to bang on the wall with his broom, or anything. He’s not _that_ much of an old lady, yet.

But he really does need to sleep.

In the end, he just sort of lies there hoping the problem will handle itself, and the music dies down sometime around eleven. He then spends twenty minutes trying to figure out _how_ passive aggressive his note should be, and then spends another fifteen actually writing it. He tapes it to his neighbor’s door the next morning, after a rough four hours of sleep.

The nice thing about working in the archives office of a city-run library is the lack of human interaction. Mostly he just alphabetizes things, and then thumbs through old maps and even older scrolls. They’ve just gotten the journal of one of Blackbeard’s ship doctors, which he spends most of the day reading.

By the time he gets home, Bellamy’s completely forgotten about the loud music, and the note, so when he sees an envelope hanging around his doorknob on Christmas present ribbon, at first he just thinks someone picked the wrong door.

Then he remembers, and opens the envelope, a careful arm’s length from his face—he’s read about anthrax breakouts, okay?

But instead of powder, he finds a drawing. It looks like something straight out of a comic book—a superhero of some sort, in vague tights and nondescript cape, frowning down at a boom box like a disappointed father. The boom box, to its credit, looks very apologetic.

 _What do you say?_ the superhero is asking, while the boom box says _Sorry for being so loud!_

It’s cute, and kind of charming, and Bellamy really hopes his neighbor is roughly the same, and that he’ll get to meet them.

Octavia comes over the next night, for their weekly _catch up and stuff our faces!_ dinner. Mostly, it involves Bellamy making lasagna, or minestrone, or whatever pasta-oriented meal his sister asks for, while Octavia perches on a bar stool and tells him horror stories about working in retail.

Octavia works at a Game Stop, which is the perfect job for her because she gets discounts and first dibs on all the best video games. But it also involves dealing with a lot of stupid people, and getting hit on by guys that are convinced female gamers only play x-box in their underwear.

“What’s that?” Octavia nods to the superhero drawing. It’s on his fridge, held up by his _When In Rome_ magnet from the history museum.

“Uh,” Bellamy says, fiddling with an oven mitt. It’s clearly the wrong answer, because now she’s watching him, with that look that says she knows _exactly_ what it is, and also she knows everything else, too.

“My neighbor played their music a little too loud the other night,” Bellamy shrugs. “That’s their apology.”

“It’s a really fucking good one,” Octavia says, still eyeing him a little too sharply. “So, this neighbor. Is she cute?”

“I don’t know,” Bellamy shoots. “They might be a he. Or some other gender—don’t be so narrow minded, O.”

Octavia gives him an unimpressed look, and finishes her beer, rolling her eyes at his Chardonnay. “You should invite your possibly-cute neighbor to dinner,” she decides. Bellamy sighs—now that Octavia knows about them, she’ll make it her mission to drag them into his life.

“What if they’re not my type?” he argues, and Octavia shrugs.

“They might be mine.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, and dishes them up. “Won’t that make Lincoln jealous?” he teases, and Octavia throws her bottle cap at his head.

“Shut up,” she says, taking a huge bite of penne. “You know you’re curious about them, too.” She pokes him with her fork. “You hung their apology on your _fridge_.”

Bellamy shrugs. “It’s a really fucking good apology.”

But Octavia’s right, and he can’t really stop thinking about the person that lives next door. He doesn’t ever see them—partially in a petty attempt to prove his sister wrong, but mostly because they just seem to have completely opposing schedules. If he listens, he can hear the violent melody of their music playing through the walls, but it always shuts off around eight at night. He’s not sure if it’s a coincidence, or if they somehow picked up that that’s when he goes to sleep, but either way, he’s grateful.

He always hears their shower going when he wakes up for work, but by five their apartment’s usually gone silent. He’s pretty sure they have some sort of night job, but he never actually hears them leave. There isn’t a car in their parking spot, either.

Not that he’s checked, or anything. He’s just an observant person.

In the end, Bellamy doesn’t actually see his neighbor until a week later.

He’s going over Latin transcripts on his couch—because they need to be spell checked, and he’s sort of the go-to guy in his department for Ancient Rome—when there’s a knock at the door.

Bellamy sometimes leaves the window to his fire escape open, because Lyra and Minerva like to lounge out on the steps, but sometimes Percy decides to explore and Mr. Kane upstairs will have to return him. So when Bellamy opens the door, he’s already half-way through his apology to the stern older man, and he isn’t at all expecting the small blonde in front of him.

He’s definitely staring—he can _feel_ it happening, but he can’t seem to stop. His mouth is open too, from stopping mid-sentence, and he knows his shirt has spaghetti sauce on it, and he doesn’t remember brushing his teeth at all, like maybe _ever_.

She’s looking up at him, clearly amused, with Percy curled up and purring pleasantly in her arms. “Oh no, don’t stop; you were on a roll.” There’s a stud in her tongue, and it catches the light differently with each word. Bellamy snaps his mouth shut with a frown.

“Did he throw up on your windowsill?” he asks, glaring at his cat. Percy likes to vomit in the most inconvenient places, but _especially_ on Kane’s windowsill. Bellamy goes to take him, but the traitor just rubs up against the girl’s chin, purring even louder.

She laughs, looking delighted. “No, why? Is that common? He was just hanging out on my fire escape, but I figured you might want him back.” She doesn’t look at all ready to hand the cat over, so Bellamy just steps aside, more awkward than he’d like.

She doesn’t even wait for an invitation, just steps right on in like she owns the place. Her hair is chopped asymmetrically at her shoulders, and the curls bounce whenever she moves. It’s more than a little distracting.

Also, she’s wearing a baggy tank top with holes in it, and a pair of black shorts he can barely see beneath the shirt. Bellamy is very pointedly not looking down any farther than that, but he can tell she’s wearing dark, heavy boots, and there’s a tattoo of something on the back of her thigh.

Which he’s not looking at, because he is a fucking saint.

“Uh, sorry,” he offers, fighting the urge to mess with his hair. “About the cat,” he adds, like it’s not obvious.

“Seriously, it’s not a big deal,” she says, setting Percy on the back of the couch. “I wasn’t really doing much anyway.” She’s looking around the room, curious and open, giving everything equal attention. Bellamy doesn’t really have people over a lot—there’s Octavia, and sometimes Miller, though usually he just goes over to Miller’s apartment so Monty doesn’t have to suffer through cat hair.

One of the side effects of a job involving zero human interaction, is not being able to just be fucking natural around other people.

“I’m Clarke, by the way,” the girl offers, leaning over to study his film collection. At this angle, he could see straight down her shirt. If he was looking, which he is _not_. “I live next door.”

“Bellamy,” Bellamy sighs. There’s another tattoo around her bicep—a crown made of laurels, it looks like. She’s exactly his type, which just seems deeply unfair. Octavia’s going to be gloating for weeks. Months, maybe. An indefinite period of time, depending on how long Clarke decides to keep her apartment, and _God_ , he really hopes she keeps her apartment.

Then the tomato sauce starts to bubble over, and he has to rush over to turn the stove down and stir it a little, and Clarke follows after because she seems to have nothing better to do.

“Spaghetti?” she asks, leaning over his shoulder. He can smell her shampoo, which he’s pretty sure is coconut something-or-other.

“Would you like some?” he offers, partly to be polite, but mostly because he doesn’t want her to leave, yet. He might be awkward and unsociable, but he got laid _a lot_ through college without hardly talking at all, so. He’s pretty sure he can get her number, at least. He’ll go from there.

Clarke looks up from where she had _clearly_ been sniffing the sauce. “I just came to return your cat,” she says, amused. “I didn’t mean to extort dinner out of you.”

Bellamy shrugs. “It’s not extortion if I offer first,” he points out, dipping a spoon in and then handing it to her to try.

She gives a little moan of appreciation around it, that Bellamy isn’t prepared for.

“Plus if you left now, he’d just worry all night,” Octavia declares, letting the door shut behind her. “ _I hope she’s getting enough protein. What do you think she’s having for dinner? Oh God—what if it’s_ instant ramen?” she makes a face, sliding onto her bar stool as Clarke laughs.

“Well, when you put it like that, I’m doing you both a favor,” she grins, stepping away so she can lean against the counter. “I’m Clarke. The neighbor.”

Octavia’s eyes flash with something a little too gleeful for comfort. “Octavia. The sister.” She nods to the drawing, which is still hanging on the fridge. Bellamy stares at it in horror. “You’re really good.”

Clarke shrugs, a little pink but clearly pleased to see it. “I should have added more freckles,” she muses, eyeing the superhero. “I was kind of a dick, that first night.”

“You weren’t,” Bellamy argues, pulling out three plates.

“Yeah, you couldn’t have known Bell’s an old lady,” Octavia agrees as Clarke gently shoos Psyche off the second stool.

“How many cats do you have?” she asks Bellamy, curious.

“Enough to form a small militia,” Octavia grumbles. Octavia is firmly a _dog person_ , which is fine. Wrong, but fine.

“I prefer to think of them as houseguests,” he says, pulling a pinot gregio from the fridge. “Do you drink wine?” Clarke and Octavia make identical faces of disgust, so he pulls out two hard ciders, too. “You used to have good taste,” he tells his sister with a sigh. She takes a sip from her beer, primly.

“Just another thing you’ve ruined for me,” she explains. “One of many.”

“Wine is gross,” Clarke agrees, and they clink bottles. Bellamy’s pretty sure she’s checking out his sister, which is equal parts disappointing and hilarious. Octavia’s been basically married to her best friend since high school—she just hasn’t realized it, yet.

It would probably be pretty pathetic, trying to land a date as the rebound from his sister, but. Clarke is _really_ hot.

Then, to make things even worse, she’s also funny, and talented, and _cool_. She’s a graphic designer, and she’s done work for a lot of famous musicians, and even Nike, once. In her spare time, she designs tattoos.

“I never actually do them, though,” she admits. “Blood makes me squeamish, which I didn’t actually find out until partway through med school. Obviously, that didn’t work out.”

They’ve migrated over to the living room, and are only mildly paying attention to the Kingdom Hearts game Octavia put in. Octavia is, of course, crushing it, looking ready to let out a William Wallace battle cry.

“Yeah, but now you get to draw sad boom boxes all day,” Bellamy points out, and Clarke laughs.

“Good point,” she agrees. “I’m definitely coming out on top.”

She leaves a little after seven, after trying to help wash the dishes and failing so miserably at it that Bellamy has to ban her from the sink. He’s rinsing the last of them, when Octavia leans into his side.

“I like her,” she says. “She’s cute.”

“She was definitely checking you out,” Bellamy shrugs, nonchalant. So what if Clarke doesn’t want to date him? She’s still awesome, and he still wants to see her again. If all else fails they can fight over the different translations of Beowulf. “You should try to get her number. In case things with Lincoln don’t work out.”

“You’re an idiot,” Octavia snaps, flicking hot water in his eyes before walking out with a flourish.

The next day, Bellamy debates knocking on Clarke’s door for a good forty minutes. The thing is, while dinner went great and he’s pretty sure she had a good time, they didn’t actually make plans to ever hang out again. He’s pretty sure he’ll need a reason to just show up at her door, beyond the obvious _hey I think you’re cool, and I want to hang out some more_ , so he makes a couple of pb and j sandwiches before heading over.

She opens the door wearing a dark purple bath robe that’s shiny and sleek and _short_. She’s barefoot, and her toes are covered in chipped black nail polish. Her hair is a dark yellow, wet from the shower. He sees the flash of metal when she smiles.

“You brought lunch?” she laughs, noticing the sandwiches. “Peanut butter and jelly? You’re adorable.” She turns around and walks inside, leaving the door open, which he thinks means he should follow.

Clarke’s apartment is almost exactly what he expected; lots of black lacy lampshades and an enormous computer set up in the corner of the front room. There are a few pop art posters framed and hung up on the walls, and when he finds her in the kitchen, she’s slicing apples into thick chunks.

“I thought we were doing a preschool lunch,” she explains, pulling two paper plates from a large bag on the counter. “I don’t actually have any dishes,” she shrugs, curling her legs underneath her on the couch.

“So that’s why you didn’t know how to wash them,” Bellamy teases, and she sticks a leg out to kick him.

He’s throwing the plates out when he notices the sheet of paper, legal pad yellow, taped to the freezer door with holographic _My Little Pony_ stickers. It’s the note he wrote and stuck to her door, the passive aggressive one that sort of insulted her taste in music, but in a sneaky way.

“You kept this?” he asks, and Clarke flushes.

“You have nice handwriting,” she says, like that’s a sensible reason to keep some condescending letter from a stranger. He sticks it back where he found it, and when he comes back she pats the couch beside her and cues up Netflix. “So, what boring documentary are you just _dying_ to make me watch?”

Cooking for Clarke quickly becomes a habit, and nearly every night one of them finds their way to the other’s apartment. The first week, Octavia cancels on their dinner, completely unsubtle and embarrassing, but Clarke doesn’t seem to mind. They eat baked mac and cheese, and watch all of _The Never Ending Story’s_ , because Bellamy’s never seen all of them, and Clarke is convinced they’re collectively a masterpiece.

“Do they actually know they’re paying you to read?” Clarke asks, leaning over his shoulder.

They’ve been hanging out for a month now, and Bellamy’s pretty confident that they’re actual _friends_ , but she’s never been to his work before.

“Sometimes they pay me to translate,” he grins, marking his place before turning around. She’s wearing those heavy boots again, and some sort of red corset with a skirt that poofs out around her legs. He’s pretty sure she’s just here to torture him.

She holds up an Indian take-out bag. “I brought sustenance,” she declares proudly, and pulls up a chair. His supervisor, Indra, might actually murder them with their own sporks if she catches them eating in the office, but she’s not here, and it’s pretty much impossible to say no to Clarke.

Octavia invites him to the monthly trivia night at Lincoln’s bar, he’s pretty sure just so she’ll have someone to sit with while she stares at her roommate sadly. She also demanded he bring Clarke. She’s been giving him a lot of shit about Clarke lately, which is definitely unfair. He teases her about Lincoln only half as much as he _could_.

He’s sitting on Clarke’s couch, watching _Project Runway_ with her—Percy is curled up on her lap, because he’s decided he prefers Clarke’s apartment, and also her in general. Bellamy can’t even really be upset about it, since he agrees—when he gets the text.

Specifically, it says _come to nerd night w ur girl and maybe if u show off how ur king of nerds she might be impressed and pity date u or something_ , but he decides to reword it a little.

“There’s this trivia thing at O’s roommate-slash-future husband’s bar, you want to go?”

Clarke looks at him skeptically. “Octavia has a future spouse that she _lives with_ and you’re somehow okay with it?”

Bellamy shrugs. He met Lincoln years ago, when Octavia was a sophomore in high school and Lincoln was her tutor in _art_ , which. Why anyone should need a tutor in art, he will never know.

He hated the guy at first, mostly because he was older and relatively huge and constantly hanging around his little sister, but Bellamy has since had a lot of time to get used to the idea. Plus, he does actually _like_ Lincoln.

“Do you want to go? Winner gets free chicken wings for a month.”

“What kind of question is that?” Clarke scoffs. “Of course I want to go! I can crush everyone with my pop culture know-how, while you answer all the obscure historical questions like the giant nerd lord you are. Plus, it’ll be good for you to get out. You need sunlight.”

“It’s ten o’clock at night,” Bellamy points out, amused. Clarke just ruffles his hair and tugs her boots on.

“We’ll grab some Sunny D on the way.”

When they get to Grounders Pub, the building is packed, which isn’t unusual for a Saturday night. Bellamy gets weekends off, which he usually uses to just catch up on _American Pickers_ or something. He flags Octavia down at the bar, where she’s sitting with Monty and Miller and a few other people Bellamy recognizes in the vague friends-of-friends sort of way. He settles in beside his sister, with Clarke at his other side, and Lincoln sets down a glass of the house wine, which is almost unbearable but will still get him drunk, and a whiskey coke for Clarke. Octavia passes them a trivia form to fill out.

“I’m calling us _Purrcy Jackson and the Olympians_ ,” Clarke declares, writing it down before he can argue.

Clarke does crush the competition, knowing a weirdly large amount of stuff about the 1980s, even though she was barely even _alive_ back then. She also answers a question about some cactus found in Argentina, though, so. Anything goes with Clarke.

Bellamy knows all the answers dealing with history, and most of the sports ones, although Miller gives him a run for his money on those. In the end, _Purrcy Jackson and the Olympians_ edges out on top, and Clarke crawls up on the bar whooping, shouting _Does it hurt? Does it hurt??_ at the crowd in general, until Bellamy tugs her back down.

“How drunk are you?” he asks, laughing. He doesn’t remember her actually drinking that much, but he’s never seen her this wild.

“Not very,” she shrugs a shoulder, and the strap of her dress slides down. Bellamy follows the movement. “I just really wanted to stand on the bar.”

Lincoln delivers their chicken wings with a soft congratulations, and then goes to take his break in the back. Octavia follows him through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door blatantly, and Bellamy shakes his head.

“What?” Clarke pokes him with a chicken wing.

“She refuses to see how in love with her he is,” Bellamy sighs. He knows he’s supposed to be the annoying older brother that doesn’t approve of her boyfriends, but at this point, he just wants his little sister to be happy.

“Must run in the family,” Clarke says, and he turns just as she surges up to kiss him.

She tastes like hot sauce, and whiskey, and soda, and Bellamy hates all of those things, but he absolutely loves the taste of her mouth. The kiss is warm and wet and heady as she slides up against him, fingers digging into the skin of his arm.

She gives that little moan, the one she makes whenever she tastes something she likes, and Bellamy melts down into her.

“Wanna get out of here?” she whispers, grinning and giddy. She looks impossibly _happy_ , so Bellamy lunges in to kiss her again and she laughs into his mouth. “We can do this at your apartment,” she points out, fixing the strap of her dress.

Bellamy plays with the jagged ends of her hair. “We can do it here too,” he argues, licking his lips. They taste like her.

“We can do other things at your apartment,” Clarke smirks, and Bellamy drags her to the door.

Clarke steals the basket of chicken wings because _We won them fair and square and I plan on building up an appetite tonight._

Bellamy doesn’t argue.

They’re kissing again by the time he gets the door open, and then they almost trip over three cats.

“How do you feel about dogs,” he mutters. “I’m considering changing things up.”

“I like the cats,” Clarke says, tugging his shirt off. His fingers fumble for the zipper of her dress, but she just slides them down to the laces on the sides. “Should you maybe take a nap, first? Pop a Viagra?”

Bellamy bites the skin of her neck until she groans, in retaliation, and lets her skirt fall to pool around her feet. He can feel the lace of her bra, and unhooks it. “Very funny. We should probably go to the bed, before anything else. I plan on getting you off _a lot_ , tonight.” He pulls back to look at her, nearly glowing in the dim light. She’s wrecked, and gorgeous, and _fuck_ this still feels like a dream. “I’ve been wanting this for a while,” he admits, because it’s probably too soon for _I love you_.

“Same here,” Clarke says, easy as anything as she takes his hand and leads him to the bedroom. “Since I showed up with your cat and you insisted on feeding me. For the record, we should probably keep things quiet. The neighbors might be sleeping.” She’s grinning up at him as she falls back on his mattress, startling a couple of cats they didn’t notice, and Bellamy crawls over her, sucking bruises into her skin as he goes.

“For the record, I don’t care,” he breathes, and she kisses his shoulder. “We’ll apologize in the morning.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still taking song prompts on my tumblr! I'm at tierannasaurusrex.tumblr.com and if you're not following me, then you're missing out on a lot of dumb dad jokes and cat pictures.


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